


Blue (Stay With Me: alternate version)

by Miskribas



Series: Stay With Me (both versions are now ACTUALLY available) [2]
Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Infidelity, F/M, I know it’s been a year but I can explain, Love, Pining, Requited Love, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:26:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21546007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miskribas/pseuds/Miskribas
Summary: Being with Eleanor is like standing on the very edge of a cliff. He’s fighting not to fall forwards, into the ocean-blue of her eyes, but he can’t bear to fall back onto solid, safe earth either. He has to be content with this fragile, precarious thing that isn’t quite love but at the same time isn’t not, that he knows won’t last. Eventually he’s going to fall, forwards or backwards, and neither is better because he’s going to lose her either way.He shouldn’t be thinking about her.(He never stops)*The beginning is the same but the middle and end are totally different. Bear with me.
Relationships: Chidi Anagonye & Eleanor Shellstrop, Chidi Anagonye/Eleanor Shellstrop, Chidi Anagonye/Simone Garnett, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Series: Stay With Me (both versions are now ACTUALLY available) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1251509
Comments: 11
Kudos: 44





	Blue (Stay With Me: alternate version)

_If there’s a hell, Chidi thinks, this is it._

.

It starts that first day, in his office.

It ends there, too. A little later. And then starts again, so much harder and more painful than before because he’d thought it was finally over and because Eleanor.

There’s more to it than that, though.

.

It starts with an essay. The author spells Kant wrong, and seems to think that “some old guy in the IGA express checkout line” is a valid source, and Chidi’s seriously considering just failing them on principle (who spells _Kant_ wrong?) when there’s a knock at the door.

It starts with her getting his name wrong. It starts with the look in her eyes – fear and hope and something else, something big and desperate, and for a second he is filled with an absolute certainty that he’s seen that look before, that he –

_They’re in the kitchen. Chidi feels like an anvil just fell on his head, or maybe an air conditioning unit. Eleanor turns her face away from the VCR screen as if it’s hurting her to watch._

_Eleanor-on-the-tape was smiling. Content._ I did that _, he thinks, and feels a hot, confusing thing writhe behind his ribcage._ I made her look like that _._

_“So, yeah, I guess… do you… I don’t know. Do you have any… feelings like that for me… again…now?”_

And then he blinks, and she is a stranger again.

It starts with the odd feeling that this is the most important moment in his life.

.

She bullies him into asking Simone out. She’s smart, he’ll give her that. She knows just how to trap him.

(It’s almost as though they’ve known each other for years.)

The dinner is a disaster: stilted conversation about the weather, some brain science thing that Chidi does not understand, and Rawls. The waiter arrives, and it takes half an hour of agonizing over what to order for Simone to snatch the menu out of his hands. That’s how he ends up with olive lasagne. Chidi hates olives, but he eats them anyway because he doesn’t want to offend Simone. Because he _likes_ her. He really does.

The tablecloth is the same blue as Eleanor’s eyes.

.

There’s something off about Trevor.

Something cold and dangerous and wrong.

 _“She hot for teach? Did you pork the dork?” And he’s being torn apart because Eleanor, his Eleanor, wants him to be with the new one. The good one. His so-called “_ soulmate _”._

_She doesn’t want him, but he doesn’t want anyone but her._

Chidi looks at Eleanor, and though she’s keeping her face carefully blank, he knows.

She’s afraid of Trevor, too.

For a split second she is so familiar his heart aches. His hands feel weirdly empty. A memory, just out of reach, of bare skin and tangled sheets and the blue of her eyes, that slips between his fingers and is lost in a heartbeat.

(He can’t shake the feeling that they’ve known each other before.)

Trevor takes them to what must be the worst bar in the world (and that’s saying something, considering an old girlfriend once dragged Chidi to a nightclub where shirtless men fought in cages. Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last long) and hugs Eleanor, and Chidi feels a kind of strange, quiet fury creeping up on him. She looks like she’s in pain.

She tries to talk him out of his ethical meltdown and he sees his own fear and pain reflected in her eyes, and that scares him even more because he’s known her for six weeks and already she’s the bravest person he knows.

(It’s longer than that.)

So he hurts her, and then he leaves.

He hurts her, and he leaves, and so does she.

He hurts her, and he leaves, and still she comes back.

_Okay. Here we go._

.

Months pass. Trevor disappears, and leaves a note that only seems mildly suspicious. The same day, he sees the librarian and a dark-haired woman who looks vaguely familiar popping open a bottle of champagne. Eleanor wins $18, 000. Tahani starts dating the black sheep of the Hemsworth family. Jason joins a yoga group for exactly forty-three seconds (before he realises that yoga and yoghurt are in fact entirely different things and he would have been better off buying a $2 yoghurt from Woolworths). Life is good.

(It’s not, though.)

(If there’s a hell, this is it.)

Being with Eleanor is like standing on the very edge of a cliff. He’s fighting not to fall forwards, into the ocean-blue of her eyes, but he can’t bear to fall back onto solid, safe earth either. He has to be content with this fragile, precarious thing that isn’t quite love but at the same time isn’t _not_ , that he knows won’t last. Eventually he’s going to fall, forwards or backwards, and neither is better because he’s going to lose her either way.

He shouldn’t be thinking about her.

(He never stops.)

He’s with Simone. He loves Simone. Probably.

_“It’s not that I couldn’t love you,” he says, and her face falls. There’s a sharp ache in his chest. “I mean… you’re amazing… and fearless,” and they’re going to the Bad Place and there’s no way to save her and he feels like he’s drowning “and clearly… symmetrical…”_

_(What?)_

_(Wow.)_

_(Symmetrical?)_

_(Really?)_

_(Is that the best you can do?)_

_(_ Really _?!)_

“I love you,” Simone says after nine months. And his response – oh, his response! It would have made Shakespeare weep with envy.

“But… why?”

The next day he tells Eleanor, and she punches him in the arm and yells at him for fifteen minutes straight. She _wants_ him to love Simone. She doesn’t dream of the two of them, curled together amidst a sea of blankets, walking around a lake, anything and everything from any romance he’s ever heard of.

That’s fine. Good, in fact. Because he doesn’t either.

_“We are on the same page, okay?”_

It’s fine.

.

He’s had it. He’s done. He can’t stand it; this agonising fight against gravity that’s taking all his strength. He has to fall backwards. He has to.

But he can’t, not when every stolen moment with Eleanor – every moment with her voice and her face and her _eyes_ – knit together to form a patchwork blanket of heartbreaking pain and joy and _rightness_ that is unlike anything he’s ever experienced before.

He can’t, because she hugs him, and she fits in his arms so perfectly that it almost feels like she was created by the universe for him, or he for her, or both.

(He doesn’t believe in soulmates.)

.

_(“Eleanor? Hi. I’m Chidi Anagonye, and you are my soulmate.”)_

_(“I love you. I love you. I love you, too.”)_

_(“Promise me you won’t let go of my hand.”)_

_(“We will find each other, and we will help each other, because we’re soulmates_.”)

.

It’s the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of ever.

It’s really, really bad.

 _“You are very lucky I can’t send you to the Bad_ Idea _place, because that one is a_ stanker _.”_

It’s a double date.

He’s not quite sure how that became a thing, and he’s not quite sure how it differs from the Brainy Bunch before they became the Brainy Bunch, before Jason and Trevor and Tahani.

When it was just him and Eleanor and he thought it was going to stay that way forever.

.

Simone picks the restaurant. She also finds one of her friends who is free on Friday night as a date for Eleanor, who is almost as symmetrical as Eleanor (according to Simone, although she might have used the word “pretty” which – it just doesn’t do her justice, does it? Like she’s some kind of ornamental flowerpot? But then again, he’s never seen a flowerpot that wasn’t symmetrical. And actually, that’s not true either, because Jason made Tahani a gigantic lopsided purple clay one for her birthday, although what Tahani would want with a hideous flowerpot wasn’t exactly clear to any of them, including Tahani, and – the symmetrical woman, that’s the main focus now) but isn’t as likely to get drunk and cause a riot or get into a fight. Chidi thinks Simone might have superpowers. This will be fine.

It’s totally fine that Eleanor is going on a date with a symmetrical woman.

He’s fine.

 _“You guys gotta scram. My soulmate has some sort of surprise planned for me, and he seems_ very _excited about it.”_

_Sebastian gets Eleanor all the time, not just for a precious few hours a week._

_He has everything that Chidi wants, and sometimes it seems like he doesn’t even want it._

_._

It goes south before they even set foot in the restaurant.

Simone’s friend seems like a nice person. She just doesn’t seem like Eleanor’s type. There are introductions, and then Simone’s friend starts talking about the new diet that she’s on, where you can eat anything that’s seafood except shrimp because, apparently, shrimp tastes awful. “Great,” says Simone, cutting Eleanor off before she can leap to shrimp’s defence (or murder her ‘date’, which judging by the look in Eleanor’s eyes isn’t entirely out of the question). “Let’s go in, shall we?”

Inside, it gets worse.

Oh, it’s so much worse.

Eleanor, in the seat next to him, spends the whole time making fun of the couple a table over. They are disgustingly gooey and pretentious, and Chidi tries to tell her off but starts laughing instead. Simone and her friend are looking at the two of them like they’re insane. Maybe they are.

The waiter comes out with a basket of olive bread. “Hey, um, Brain,” says Eleanor, squinting at his HI, I’M BRIAN name tag. Chidi’s proud of her trying, he supposes. “D’you think we could have crackers instead? Or, like, frozen yogurt? Something without olives?”

“How did you know?’ he asks her after the waiter has finished his spiel on _why_ fro-yo isn’t an appropriate appetizer and left (with a huffy “and it’s _Brian_!”) to take the orders of the couple to their right. Chidi wishes him luck, and he’s going to need it, because the couple have now progressed to full-on making out over the table, completely ignoring the waiter. Eleanor keeps looking over at them. There’s an odd expression on her face. In the dim light of the restaurant, she looks especially symmetrical. He can’t tear his eyes away from her, and as a result nearly stabs himself in the nose with his fork, and – why exactly is Simone interested in him again?

“Know what?” Eleanor’s voice sounds strained.

“That I don’t like olives.”

She turns away from the couple and looks him dead-on, face crumpling into a bewildered grimace, and he feels like the air has been sucked out of his lungs. “What are you talking about, weirdo? You told me.”

He didn’t. He knows he didn’t, because most of the time he’s spent with her has been with Simone, too, and he’s been careful to not tell Simone about the olives because nearly a year later it’s actually a good memory. The awkward parts have faded away. He doesn’t want to ruin it. Everything is _good_.

He tells her as much.

“ _No_ – dude – you were… wait… no, you’re right. Huh. Who was I thinking of?”

(Somebody else.)

(Which is really, truly fine.)

(Really.)

Unfortunately, the man on their right chooses that exact moment to say to his girlfriend “…The spaces between you and me resonate in my heart.” Eleanor spits out a mouthful of wine, and they’re kicked out of the restaurant by Brain – er, Brian – who must really be having a terrible night.

.

Simone offers to drive him home, but she’s also taking her friend and Chidi thinks he’s had just about all the self-help book quotes he can take, because – well, he thinks he’s doing pretty well and also because he’s been on edge ever since she suggested giving him a makeover.

They drive off, and Eleanor wanders up next to him. He doesn’t see her, or hear her, but there’s that feeling – a key turning in a lock, the last answer of the Saturday crossword puzzle, a hot cup of tea and a book on a rainy morning. A sense of rightness.

He turns to look at her.

“Well,” she says. “I didn’t strangle her. I should get a medal.” She’s a little drunk. She’s also probably being a little harsh. Simone’s friend wasn’t that bad.

Then again, there was that business about the makeover, so it’s possible Eleanor has a point. He will never, ever tell her that.

She rifles around in her purse. “Hold that,” she says, and Chidi finds his hands full of gum wrappers, loose change, a single cracker and, somehow, another bottle of wine. “How—” he starts, but she cuts him off.

“You really don’t wanna know.”

He should chastise her, make her return it, but he’s probably not entirely sober either and there’s a very high chance Brian the waiter wouldn’t let either of them back in even if it was just to give the wine back.

“Shit,” Eleanor mumbles, and Chidi decides to donate the wine to charity.

“What?”

“Taxi money.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t have any.” She grimaces. “Do you—”

He looks around. “Aren’t we, like, two blocks away from your motel?”

Eleanor frowns and turns in a circle. “Are we?”

“Yeah, I—” He breaks off. “Hang on, how did you get here, then?”

She gives him a sheepish look. “I took a taxi,” she admits. “And I’m not really sure how to get home.

The streetlamps cast an orange glow over everything, and he’s not sure if it’s the wine or Eleanor’s presence, or that he just got kicked out of an establishment for the first time in his life, or something else entirely, but there’s a laugh bubbling up inside his chest and then she’s laughing too, and soon they’re both doubled over in hysterics on the footpath.

It vaguely occurs to him that this is the first time Eleanor’s ever called Australia “home”. The thought fills him with an unexplainable joy.

.

They stumble along the road. Eleanor’s slightly unsteady on her feet, thanks to the wine, and the fact that every few steps they both dissolve into laughter again. “I feel the absence of you reverberate in my heart,” says Eleanor. Chidi laughs so hard he nearly falls into the path of an oncoming car. 

He just has to stop her from doing the kind of thing she usually does when she’s drunk: sleeping with strangers and shoplifting. Occasionally throwing things. Once she cried into his shirt for an hour because he had a photo of his parents on his wall.

The motel has just come into view when it starts to rain. Eleanor grabs his hand and pulls him towards the flickering neon VACANCIES sign. He steps in a puddle, and then they’re off again, staggering along the side of the road howling with laughter. They reach the door out of breath and soaking wet.

The receptionist gives them a strange look as they walk past.

She asks him if he wants to stay.

 _Of course I’ll stay_ , he wants to tell her. _I’d stay forever, if you wanted._

But she doesn’t, and he doesn’t, and he can’t. So they watch a movie, and she leans her head on his shoulder, and he falls asleep to the sound of rain lashing the windows and the smell of Eleanor’s shampoo.

.

He’s fallen.

He realises it the second he wakes up on her bed, fully clothed, with sunlight skipping across her cheeks, turning her hair to molten gold. Their arms are around each other. She’s never looked more symmetrical.

He’s fallen off the cliff and into the ocean and the guilt is stronger than it’s ever been before.

.

It ends after the liquidation of the Brainy Bunch, after Michael and Janet and Who What When Where Wine and chilli and the meeting with the dean that crushed his dreams and brought his career to a sudden, shuddering halt.

He looks at Eleanor, slung across her chair – his chair – no, not his anymore, ugh – without a care in the world. He wishes he could be more like her. He wishes he had her to help him be more like her. He wishes he had her, period.

(Wishes don’t come true.)

“I need to end things with Simone.”

Maybe wishes don’t come true. He’ll never get to have Eleanor for himself, he knows that, he’s made peace with it. Well, no, he hasn’t, but he’s _accepted_ it. He can never, ever tell Eleanor how he feels, or kiss her, or hold her in his arms at night, but he can stay by her side, make sure she’s happy and safe for always, and that just might be enough.

It’s the easiest decision he’s ever made.

.

“…but too bad, because I need to say it, because you deserve it. Because… because…” because I love you. Because I can’t lose you. Because it’s you, and you told me you loved me and I was scared you were going to take it all back, but that doesn’t matter, _you_ matter -

He doesn’t say that, though.

He kisses her, and she kisses him back.

And everything.

Everything is fine.

Everything is great.

**Author's Note:**

> K so I know I said this would be coming soon in like JANUARY but my life kind of imploded and then I came out as bi and I got serious about writing as a career (I'm now 15k words into an actual novel) and honestly, that goddamn rain scene WOULD NOT let me write it so. To anyone who reads this, I love you.
> 
> I also have tumblr now, if you wanna follow my [writeblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/miskribas).


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